The Pregnancy Contract Read Online Free PDF

dolls her father had insisted on buying for her, but had never let her play with. What a perfect analogy for her life, she thought bitterly. Look but don’t touch. Learn, but whatever you do, don’t use that knowledge. Be beautiful, but don’t actually be anything.
    She drew in a deep breath and squared her shoulders. Well, all that was going to change. As much as she’d loved her father, and had strived for his attention, she could see that they were equally to blame for her past behavior. But she had changed and she planned to continue to change and grow a whole lot more. Including going back to university and finishing her degree.
    It had taken quite a bit to make her eventually grow up. Being overseas alone, facing her darkest days and subsequently her brightest moments as she’d reawakened to who she needed to be.
    Still, she had to attend to her father’s estate first, and that meant getting up on time to see the lawyer tomorrow morning, which in turn meant getting a decent night’s sleep.
    She went through the motions of getting ready for bed, finding solace in routine and joy in the things she used to take so much for granted. Simple things, like a tube of toothpaste, running water from a tap, a flush toilet. She laughed at her reflection in the mirror. Who’d have thought that Piper Mitchell would ever have been reduced to this? Finding joy in modern plumbing. Frankly, she didn’t care, not anymore.
    The toll of the news she’d borne today, and the travel she’d undertaken to get here, swamped her and the lure of fresh clean sheets and a proper bed became stronger than she could resist.
    The next morning, Piper woke as the sun began to filter through her window. To her surprise she had tears on her cheeks and her pillow was damp beneath her face. She’d been dreaming about her father and the sense of forever being left reaching out for him, yet not being accepted by him, still filled her. She swiped a hand across her face. Tears wouldn’t solve anything, she knew that with an entrenched awareness she’d learned the hard way. No matter the loss, you had to learn to get through it.
    She rolled to the other side of her bed and stretched, luxuriating in the sensation of fine cotton sheeting against her bare skin. Her father’s robe was spread over the top of her bed and she grabbed it to her, pulling it on as she sat up and slipped from between the sheets to make her way into the adjoining bathroom.
    Eschewing a shower for the decadence of a deep bath, she bent over and turned on the faucets. Watching the water fill in the ancient claw-footed tub gave her an illicit sense of pleasure. She would never take something like this for granted again. Despite everything that had happened since her return, it was so incredibly good to be home.
    Hard on the heels of that thought came the reminder that the house was no longer her home. She was a guest here. Wade’s guest. The news had come as a shock last night and her reaction had been instinctive and out of sorts with her new resolve. She hoped that would be the last unpleasant surprise she’d have to bear.
    She was in a painfully tenuous situation. She had no qualifications to speak of, unless bartering with local rebels or militia for medical supplies and trading with cash from hertrust fund was anything worth mentioning. Nor did she now have a roof over her head to call her own.
    Piper slipped the robe off her shoulders and, letting it drop to the floor behind her, stepped into the almost full bath. She sank into the water, letting its warmth seep into her skin all the way through to her bones. After the heat of some of the countries she’d lived in, she didn’t think she’d still crave warmth the way she did now. But with her father dead and her prospects perched on a very precarious ledge, the world around her felt very cold indeed.
    Piper let her hair fall over the back of the bath and rested her